Back to Paris
by The Secret Miracle
Summary: The job ends. Cobb and Saito are gone. Ariadne goes back to Paris. Eames does not solve any of her problems. MA for awkward sexual situations.


The stretcher is what Ariadne remembers most clearly. She sees it in her dreams, now, of course, since she knows how to control her dreams her unconscious mind drags these memories unbidden to the surface from whatever depths in which they lurk. It was white canvas stretched between hollow aluminum poles, and it had straps but they didn't need them for his unmoving form. His eyes were open.

His eyes were open and the pupils were dilated but he was staring at nothing, at the ceiling of the plane, at their faces as they crowded around him, at the ceiling of the ambulance the Los Angeles paramedics wheeled him into. His eyes didn't even move. Ariadne was afraid that they would dry out but she was afraid to close them because that was what people did to corpses in movies. She wanted to touch his hair or hold his hand but she was afraid of him in a way she'd never been before, even when in the tragic depths of his mind.

Saito wasn't catatonic the way Cobb was. He was just a mindless drooling babbling child. His mouth twitched to one side and the eyelid on the other side of his face twitched his eye closed.

He had already given her a ticket back to Paris.

She didn't want to go back. She didn't know where else to go.

The airport was crowded and the Metro was crowded and she hung onto a polished metal bar that was kind of slimy with someone else's palm-sweat but the halls of the Sorbonne were empty when she walked through them. She'd forgotten it was a Sunday. Her clothes sort of stuck to her body and her hair hung limply on either side of her face. Her boots sent out muted clicks that echoed faintly within the marble halls. It was too big, she turned her face to the ceiling and watched the swirls and specks of the polished stone slide by as she walked. She barely knew she was walking it was such a robotic motion.

She takes a shower, in her studio apartment the shower is in the kitchen is in the bedroom is in the living room, and she hesitates and sits on the edge of the claw-footed bathtub with pale bare legs and lets the water run hot over her fingertips before she turns the knob for the shower. Low water pressure and a soap-stained shower curtain.

It is dawn and she goes to bed naked and feels somehow adult about it, then feels childish to at all imagine that she could be an adult.

She dreams that night and when her dreams are empty they are empty, no projections, no furniture, no streetlights or Bouquinistes. She sits alone in empty rooms or on deserted streets, and along the Seine all the green-painted wooden stands are shuttered and peeling.

When she wakes up her apartment is grayly illuminated by the same light as when she fell asleep. It takes her a moment to sit up and realize that it is now dusk. She doesn't know what time zone her brain is stuck in because she's been to and through so many in the past week. She puts on a clean shirt and the same jeans she's been wearing for a while now and she descends into the streetlighted world to buy maybe some fruit or something. She isn't hungry but she buys a little basket of strawberries and an apple and some cheese and a loaf of bread, because she can't awaken the energy to actually cook anything. She fumbles for a moment with the key in the lock on her door when returning and wonders why she locked it at all.

She sets the food she just bought on her little table and stares at it for a couple of minutes, as though she doesn't know what to do with it.

She goes back to bed.

A week has passed and her sleep schedule is almost normal, but it's still a few hours off and most of the week she couldn't quite get herself out of bed and out of the apartment and over Pont au Change and to school. On Friday she finally does make it, but somehow keeps walking and ends up in the Jardin du Luxembourg. It's a little cool but it's going to be spring soon and some of the early flowers are blooming. She scuffs her feet along the gravel on the walkways, crunch crunch, it's like walking over broken glass and for a second she misses him so strongly she almost collapses.

It's ridiculous, she tells herself. You knew him for two weeks. He is twice your age and obsessed with his dead wife and this is a schoolgirl crush. He is (was?) mysterious and heartbroken and he showed her a magical world and she was enthralled.

She watches a dry white stone fountain for a while. Some birds flit on its rim but they never stay long.

She wonders where the rest of the team is, but in an abstract way where her only interest is that they all know things about Cobb that she doesn't know (though, she reassures herself, she knows parts of him they'll never know) and she wants to talk about him. Arthur gave her a card with his phone number on it, but he probably wouldn't say anything out of some weird cufflinked code of honor or something, and besides Cobb obviously withheld much of himself from Arthur though they worked together. Yusuf had only just met Cobb the way she had, but Eames. Eames is the key player here, on her chess board he is the queen who can move in any direction. He could know nothing or everything.

She has no idea where to find him. She decides to call Arthur. The phone doesn't even ring before she gets his voicemail: an automated female voice says, "You've reached the voice mail box of—" and then "Arthur Campbell" in his bored voice, slightly fuzzy with background noise, and then the automated voice again, "—if you'd like to leave a message," but she hangs up and feels sort of silly. He didn't seem to like Eames anyway, why would he know where he is.

Maybe she just wants to talk about Cobb and doesn't care who she's talking to. She calls Arthur back and waits through his voicemail message. "Hi, Arthur. This is Ariadne. From the job," this is ridiculous, how many Ariadnes does anyone know, but she continues, "I kind of had some questions about… what happened?" She leaves her number and thinks she did an okay job of sounding like she wasn't directly obsessing over Arthur's now catatonic former business partner. Which impression will obviously fade as soon as she actually speaks to him and he realizes how crazy she's going with this.

She buys a Nutella crepe from a vendor on a street corner and eats it slowly while crossing the bridge back to her apartment. The sun has peeked out from behind the clouds and it's just warm enough for her to unbutton her jacket, which she does though she gets Nutella all over the buttons. She knows she's usually way more co-ordinated than this. She bumps into someone while rubbing at the buttons with her sleeve and says "Pardon," but the man apologizes in English, with a British accent, and this is enough to make her look up and double take when she realizes it's Eames.

She reflexively sticks her hand into her pocket to feel the weight of the bishop totem, though she realizes that it would still be there if this were her dream.

She doesn't think she would dream about Eames.

"Ariadne!" He says and he'd probably sound shocked if he could but she suspects it's his thing to always sound jaded. "What a coincidence."

She narrows his eyes at him. "This is more than that, you knew I walked over this bridge every day."

"You've got some," Eames says, and he reaches out to brush a bit of something off of her lower lip; his fingertip brushes lightly over her skin but she jerks back with an involuntary flinch. "Sorry," he says, hands open in surrender in front of him.

"Oh, no, I'm just a little weird today, it's my fault."

"Do you want to get a cup of coffee or something?" Eames says sort of abruptly but it's still smooth, he could probably make almost anything sound smooth, "What do you drink here? Coffee, tea? Wine?" And she smiles in spite of herself, attempts to regain her composure.

"I know a place that makes a croque monsieur that'll knock your socks off."

The café is out of the way and sort of grimy and its wicker chairs are splintering and slightly unsteady and every table rocks back and forth when you put anything on it, but the surly and heavily accented chef makes delicious sandwiches and Michel, the waiter (there is only one), knows her by name and always gives her a cappuccino on the house, whole milk and real sugar.

Eames likes it, and he doesn't speak a word of French but he banters with Michel who knows some broken English and she translates between them, a little, and when Eames takes out a paper packet of tobacco and onion-skin-thin rolling papers he proffers a cigarette each to Ariadne, who refuses, and Michel, who doesn't. She watches Eames's fingers deftly roll a cigarette. She had never thought them to be particularly noteworthy, it was Arthur who had the long thin bone-pale artist's fingers, but seeing him arrange the stringy dry tobacco in the crease of one of the papers and carefully tighten the paper into a little cylinder is strangely engrossing.

Eames lights Michel's and his own, a little orange glow dramatically highlights his features for a moment when he cups his hands around a match. Michel leaves, trailing smoke, to make Ariadne's coffee.

"Sorry," Eames waves smoke away from Ariadne's general direction, but she shakes her head and waves a dismissive hand.

"Everyone in this city smokes, it's not a big deal."

"The stereotypes are true, then," Eames says with a bit of an improper tint to his words, but she can't really place why and she lets it slide without comment. "So what do you do here, you go to school?"

"Yeah, I'm in my second year at the Sorbonne for biochemistry and French with an emphasis in creative writing."

Eames's eyebrows raise. "Whoa, I didn't realize you were a genius then."

"What? I'm not," she laughs a little self consciously. "They're similar. They both involve taking disparate elements within a set system, molecules or language, and combining them to create something new."

"You're way beyond me there darling, I barely know English."

"You're good at what you do, though." She had been incredibly impressed by his counterfeiting skills. But thinking about that leads her to think about the job and her mind instantly snaps back to Cobb and she loses track of the conversation for a moment.

Michel brings her cappuccino. She just barely sips it with her eyes closed, steam billowing around her eyelids, both hands cupped around the mug. Eames is saying, "I get by with it," when she opens her eyes and looks at him through a faint haze of smoke.

His two-day stubble looks remarkably like Cobb's.

She scalds her mouth on her coffee; tears spring to her eyes.

Eames scrutinizes her and she feels bare, she didn't put on a scarf this morning and her neck is bare and the white scar over her aorta is probably glaring and obvious and he's probably wondering about it and she can hardly take it any longer. She composes herself, realizes that it has got to be too dark and smoky and her hair too long to see anything.

"What is it," they both ask at the same time, and Ariadne would smile at this if she were feeling herself. "You first," Eames says.

Ariadne grimaces with one side of her mouth.

"Okay, me first," Eames continues. "What's going on in your head? Where are you really?"

She laughs, a sudden little ironic burst of sound.

"And what happened when you went into Cobb's mind?"

Her eyes pop open. "Why," she says, but it's more defensive than inquisitive and she is trying to read his intent on his face but he seems simply curious, no more.

He shrugs. "You were the last person to speak to him. I just want to know if you… heard anything."

Eames is too calculatedly casual. She knows this is what he found her to discuss.

"Why do you think I know anything you don't? Don't you think I would have told everyone?" But she says this too quickly, she is too frantic, and he must know. She narrows her eyes. "Couldn't you have just Extracted this from my mind somehow? I know you have the skills."

Eames shrugs. "I respect you. I don't want to steal from you," and she is momentarily taken aback by his honesty.

"He said that he was going to find Saito and come back with him. That's the last I heard." And he'd said he wouldn't get lost, he'd promised her, and she knows it's a silly childish thing to be angry at him for disappointing her in this promise but it's easier that than realize that for all intents and purposes he's gone.

She can hardly stand to make conversation while she picks at a sandwich and watches Eames attack his croque monsieur but she detaches from the situation and allows herself to exist in a purely intellectual world where her loss is far distant. They talk about dreams and puzzles and she's comfortable, again, finally, more comfortable than she has been in weeks though she still feels the ache of despair in her far-away emotional body.

He pays for the meal and then, still feeling distant and ghost-like, she invites him back to her apartment. She isn't sure whether this is actually happening.

She ascends the stairs, unlocks her door, takes off her jacket and he takes off his jacket and she kisses him, it's an unfamiliar feeling but she can tell she's good at it, his stubble scrapes her upper lip and his hand tangles in her hair.

Then he pulls back. "Are you sure. Would you rather we do this in a dream?" he asks cautiously. She shakes her head, though she knows he is implying that he could be anyone she wanted him to be. She knows he knows who she wants him to be.

Eighteen is too old to never have done this.

She sits on the edge of her bed to slide her boots off. She feels like she's moving in slow motion. Eames kicks his shoes off by the door and then stands in front of her, fingertips under her chin, tipping her head back to look at her. He leans over and kisses her.

And then she's no longer moving in slow motion and he is on top of her and she's clutching at the back of his neck, she can feel the bristly short hairs there, he smells like cigarettes and a little bit of something sharp and earthy but also clean like soap. He lightly bites her lower lip, and tugs until she makes a little noise in her throat. She trembles a little bit as he unbuckles her belt and unzips her jeans and slides her underwear down to press a finger into her.

"This isn't, this isn't your first time is it," Eames says disbelievingly. She makes what she hopes is an apologetic face at him. "You're sure you want this?" he asks again, even more tenderly this time than before.

"Just, please," Ariadne says. He pushes a finger into her and curls it a little bit and she gasps, this is so much different than doing this herself, it's weird and unfamiliar but not inherently bad. Just strange. And kind of nice.

Then Eames slides down the bed a little bit and tugs her pants off and sort of lies between her legs, which she's afraid to open because that's committing to something she isn't entirely sure she wants any more, and she doesn't want to seem too eager though at this point she realizes that is a ridiculous thing to be thinking. He eases her knees apart, she lifts up her hips as he goes down on her.

Her head rolls back and she pushes herself towards him, involuntarily, and tries to control her breathing. His beard scrapes the insides of her thighs. She clutches at the sheets.

"Are you okay?" he asks, looking up along her body as she looks down at him. She's still wearing her gray silk shirt, which clings to her flat tense body, and it's strange to see her shirt end at pale bare hips and tight dark curls of hair and someone, Eames especially, right there.

"Um, yeah?" Ariadne isn't sure how to respond. Should she praise him? Thank him?

She sits up and takes her shirt off, and she's self conscious that her smallish breasts sort of point to each side instead of straight forward, her stomach is a little convex instead of concave, her hips boyishly slim.

Eames unbuttons his shirt and then slips it off, too, his skin is much more tan than hers and he has a white twist of scar tissue along one clavicle, and short coarse hair on his chest and arms and she can't even bear to look down even though his pants are still on and she feels horribly out of her element.

"You can say no," Eames tells her; she is disarmed by his kindness and feels even more lost.

"It's okay." She steels her resolve. "Just do it."

Eames takes his wallet out of his pocket and takes a little foil square out of his wallet and holds it in his palm as he undresses. She still looks away, still, as he puts the condom on and kneels between her legs.

She makes a little choked noise at the pain she feels as he presses into her, tears slip out of the corners of her eyes and she grits her teeth and almost sobs. She will break apart, she thinks.

He pulls back but then tries again and this is like breaking a bone only worse because for some reason she had wanted this to happen. Her eyes are squeezed shut and tearing and she thinks about Cobb, now, her mental boundaries and defenses are all shot to hell and she lets herself shape his roundish face and dark slick hair and blue eyes in her memory, the shadow of beard on his chin and the faint sleep deprivation bruises under his eyes, and with every pain that wracks her she clings closer to this image until it is all she can see, until it is all her world consists of.

"Ariadne."

She opens her eyes and it's like coming out of a dream.

"I don't want to hurt you."

She can't bring herself to say anything. Or she can't find anything to say.

"Are you all right?" And there is real concern written across Eames's features. Ariadne wants to disappear.

"Just give me a minute," she tells him. She presses her legs together and brings her knees up to her chin and wraps her arms around them, as tightly as they can go.

"I understand if you want me to go."

"Um," she says. She thinks she might be bleeding.

"Please." Eames shuffles through the papers on her table until he finds a blank notebook page, and writes diagonally in the top corner EAMES and his phone number. "Please call me tomorrow."

She nods. He gets dressed. He leaves.

After a moment she gets up stiffly and walks to her little bathroom and looks at herself in the small clear mirror. She looks the same, lips a little kiss-swollen, eyes a little tear-swollen. But the same.

She turns off the light and lies back down on her bed, on top of the covers, in her dark apartment, and she stares at the occasional spots of passing cars' headlights drifting across her wall until she falls asleep.


End file.
